Motivational Factors Influencing Job Satisfaction

Employee motivation and job satisfaction have always been an important issue in an organization, but few organizations have not made motivation and job satisfaction top priorities or even neglected the issue at times. The failure of the managers in the organization to determine the motivational factors of the employees will create dissatisfaction of the employees which will eventually result to the decrease in productivity of the employees. The managers of the organization should properly utilize its people who are considered the most important part of an organization because these employees are the one’s doing the legwork in order to achieve the goals of the organization. It will be difficult to utilize the employees of the organization if they are not properly motivated, and in effect create job dissatisfaction of employees. A well-motivated person works harder and perseveres longer than an unmotivated one. A person level of intensity and persistence is higher because motivation energizes his behavior and gives the direction. It is very similar to the vector quantity in physics, it has both magnitude and direction. In the total workforce, almost all human behavior is motivated and caused and directed, meaning people act because something cause it, but their actions must not be aimless, it must be directional. Motivation, therefore, must be considered the strength of the drive toward an action. In this sense, motivation refers to the whole class of drives, needs and similar forces that prompt people to act in certain ways and develop tendencies for specific behaviors that may eventually lead to job satisfaction (Martirez, 2003).

It is understandable that managers expect high quality performance from their employees regardless of the work environment that they provide. However, if from their employers concentrate on generating a kind of workplace that is positive with high motivation, job satisfaction would likely increase their productivity. Therefore, satisfied employees are more productive, creative and more committed to their work and to their employees as well.

However, employees are motivated to excel in their work for many different reasons. Such reasons always lie on different factors. More often, these factors play an important role in motivating employees to do their best. An employee in this situation is self-motivated. When an employee is motivated, he exerts much effort leading to favorable job performance. The effort is channeled in a direction that is profitable to the organization. Effort that is intended for, and consistent with, the goal of the organization is the kind of effort that this study sought for. It should be noted that motivation is a need satisfying process. Thus, before one goes to exert high levels of effort, the individual needs must be conditioned first. The needs and desires of a person both have a strong impact on the direction of a person’s behavior. For this reason, individuals will satisfy their needs through different means, and are driven to succeed for varying reasons intrinsically or extrinsically.

Hence, a motivated person is conceptualized as someone with cognitions or benefits that lead to constructive achievement behavior. Such as exerting effort or persisting in the face of difficulty.

Each individual has different ways to be motivated and to be satisfied. Some employees are motivated in satisfying their personal needs based on the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs such as physiological, safety/ security, feeling of belongingness, self-esteem, and self-actualization as developed by Abraham Maslow. According to Young (2005) Maslow developed a “hierarchy of needs” or an order of needs that need to be fulfilled in each person in order for the person to be motivated. It is believed that person’s who attain the highest level of the needs are more productive and satisfied because his/her being is...

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